Finding a good proxy can indeed be very difficult. Have been importing for many years now and I don't know how many proxy/forwarding services I've been registered with now. Sooner or later there is always trouble because of incompetence on their part. Considering how much money is being made with the business, I do wonder why no proper company has moved into the space yet.
As for Mercari: Their website is somewhat of a pain and their search function is pretty garbage but it has the advantages of sellers often times paying the local shipping costs, being able to communicate with the seller (like asking them to put more pictures of an item online or haggling (which Japanese do at least)), being able to find items for under value (ideally before they are snacked by merchants who then put it onto YA) and, due to their bad search function, find rare items that haven't been bought yet.
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